Woman in this scale, the weed in that, Jupiter, hang out thy balance, and weigh them both; and if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee—O Jupiter, try the weed.

After he had administer'd a dose
Of snuff mundungus to his nose;
And powder'd th' inside of his skull,
Instead of th' outward jobbernol,
He shook it with a scornful look
On th' adversary, and thus he spoke.

I'm gettin' tired of guys who smoke pipes. When are they gonna outlaw this shit? Guy with a fuckin' pipe! It's an arrogant thing to place a burning barrier between you and the rest of the world. It's supposed to imply thoughtfulness or intelligence. It's not intelligent to stand around with a controlled fire sticking out of your mouth. I say, "Hey, professor! You want somethin' hot to suck on? Call me! I'll give ya somethin' to put in your mouth!" I think these pipe-smokers oughta just move to the next level and go ahead and suck a dick. There's nothing wrong with suckin' dicks. Men do it, women do it; can't be all bad if everybody's doin' it. I say, Drop the pipe, and go to the dick! That's my advice. I'm here to help.

Haven't we had about enough of this cigar smoking shit? When are these fat, arrogant, overfed, white-collar business criminals going to extinguish their cigars and move along to their next abomination? Soft, white, business pussies suckin' on a big brown dick. That's all it is, folks, a big, brown dick. You know, Freud used to say, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Yeah? Well, sometimes it's a big brown dick! With a fat, criminal business asshole sucking on the wet end of it! But, hey. The news is not all bad for me. Not all bad. Want to hear the good part? Cancer of the mouth. Good! Fuck 'em! Makes me happy; it's an attractive disease. So light up, suspender-man, and suck that smoke deep down into your empty suit. And blow it out your ass, you miserable cocksucker!

Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
While each man, through thy height'ning steam,
Does like a smoking Etna seem.

Thomas Riley Marshall, Vice President under Woodrow Wilson, to Henry M. Rose, the assistant secretary of the Senate, while Marshall was presiding as president of the Senate. Reported in the New York Tribune (January 4, 1920), part 7, p. 1. Confirmed in Marshall's autobiography, Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall (1925), caption facing p. 244; and in Charles M. Thomas, Thomas Riley Marshall (1939), p. 175.

A good cigar is like a beautiful chick with a great body who also knows the American League box scores.

Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
The gnomes direct, to every atom just,
The pungent grains of titillating dust,
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.

Nick Naylor: Few people on this planet know what it is to be truly despised. Can you blame them? I earn a living fronting an organizing that kills one thousand two hundred human beings a day; 1200 people. We're talking two jumbo jet plane loads of men, women, and children. I mean there's Attila, Genghis, and me, Nick Naylor the face of cigarettes, the Colonel Saunders of nicotine. This is where I work, the Academy of Tobacco Studies. It was established by seven gentlemen you may recognize from C-Span. These guys realized quick if they were gonna claim cigarettes were not addictive they better have proof. This is the man they rely on, Erhardt Von Grupten Mundt. They found him in Germany. I won't go into the details, he's been testing the link between nicotine and lung cancer for thirty years, and hasn't found any conclusive results. The man's a genius, he could disprove gravity. Then we got our sharks. We draft them out of Ivy League law schools and give them timeshares and sports cars. It's just like a John Grisham novel. Well you know without all the espionage. Most importantly we got spin control. That's where I come in. I get paid to talk. I don't have an MD or law degree. I have a baccalaureate in kicking ass and taking names. You know that guy who can pick up any girl? I'm him, on crack.

Nick Naylor: In 1910, the US was producing ten billion cigarettes a year, by 1930 we were up to one hundred twenty three billion, what happened in between? Three things: a World War, Dieting and movies. [...] 1927, talking pictures are born. Suddenly directors need to give their actors something to do while they're talking. Cary Grant and Carole Lombard are lighting up, Bette Davis, a chimney, and Bogart, remember the first picture with him and Lauren Bacall? [...] She sort of shimmies in through the doorway. Nineteen years old. Pure sex. She says "Anyone got a match?" and Bogie throws the matches at her... and she catches them. Greatest romance in the century, how did it start? Lighting a cigarette. In these days, when someone smokes in the movies, they're either a psychopath... or an European. The message that Hollywood needs to send out is "Smoking is Cool!". We need the cast of, uh, Will & Grace smoking in their living room, Forrest Gump puffing away between his box of chocolates, Hugh Grant earning back the love of Julia Roberts by buying her favorite brand - her Virginia Slims. Most of the actors smoke already. If they start doing it on screen... We can put the sex back into cigarettes.

Generally, the control freaks only increasecontrol. Take cigarettes. At first it was just warning labels. Then, bans on t.v.ads. Then they required restaurants to have no-smoking sections. Then came the bans on airplanes, schools, workplaces, entire restaurants, then bars, too—and now, sometimes, apartments and outdoor spaces, even.

There is "no clear link" between secondhand smoke and lung cancer, a study led by researchers at Stanford University has found.

After a decade-long study of more than 76,000 women, the researchers concluded that while there is still a strong association between smoking and lung cancer, there is no significant relationship between the cancer and exposure to passive smoke.

The results of the California CPS I cohort do not support a causal relation between exposure to environental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. Given the limitations of the underlying data in this and the other studies of environmental tobacco smoke and the small size of the risk, it seems premature to conclude that environmental tobacco smoke causes death from coronary heart disease and lung cancer.

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west,
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest;
Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand:
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers wooing the caress,
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties—Give me a cigar!

Contented I sit with my pint and my pipe,
Puffing sorrow and care far away,
And surely the brow of grief nothing can wipe,
Like smoking and moist'ning our clay;
* * * * *
For tho' at my simile many may joke,
Man is but a pipe—and his life but smoke.

Content and a Pipe. Old ballad.

The Indian weed, withered quite,
Green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay.
All flesh is hay.
Thus think, then drink tobacco.
* * * *
And when the smoke ascends on high,
Then thou behold'st vanity
Of worldly stuff,
Gone at a puff.
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

Attributed to Erskine, Gospel Sonnets, Meditations on Tobacco, Part I. Printed in a Collection Two Broadsides against Tobacco (1672). Erskine claimed only Part II, Part I. is from an old poem.

Tobacco, an outlandish weed,
Doth in the land strange wonders breed;
It taints the breath, the blood it dries,
It burns the head, it blinds the eyes;
It dries the lungs, scourgeth the lights,
It 'numbs the soul, it dulls the sprites;
It brings a man into a maze,
And makes him sit for others' gaze;
It mars a man, it mars a purse,
A lean one fat, a fat one worse;
A white man black, a black man white,
A night a day, a day a night;
It turns the brain like cat in pan,
And makes a Jack a gentleman.

Tobacco, charmer of my mind,
When like the meteor's transient gleam,
Thy substance gone to air I find,
I think, alas! my life's the same.

Misson, Memoirs of his travels over England (1697). Translation by Ozell.

I would I were a cigarette
Between my Lady's lithe sad lips,
Where Death like Love, divinely set.
With exquisite sighs and sips,
Feeds and is fed.
* * * *
For life is Love and Love is death,
It was my hap, a well-a-day!
To burn my little hour away.

Old man, God bless you, does your pipe taste sweetly?
A beauty, by my soul!
A ruddy flower-pot, rimmed with gold so neatly,
What ask you for the bowl?
O sir, that bowl for worlds I would not part with;
A brave man gave it me,
Who won it—now what think you—of a bashaw?
At Belgrade's victory.

It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tabagie," as Michelet calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it because it renders you happily apart from thought or work;… Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment, makes just so surely for domestic happiness.

Look at me—follow me—smell me! The "stunning" cigar I am smoking is one of a sample intended for the Captain General of Cuba, and the King of Spain, and positively cost a shilling! Oh! * * * I have some dearer at home. Yes, the expense is frightful, but——it! who can smoke the monstrous rubbish of the shops?

A Veteran of Smokedom, The Smoker's Guide, Chapter IV.

To smoke a cigar through a mouthpiece is equivalent to kissing a lady through a respirator.

A Veteran of Smokedom, The Smoker's Guide, Chapter V.

The cigarettes Mr. Slump smoked were prepared by doctors, so the advertisements declared, with the sole purpose of protecting his respiratory system. Yet Mr. Slump suffered and the young secretary suffered with him, hideously. For the first hours of every day he was possessed by a cough which arose from tartarean depths and was relieved only by whisky.

Dick Stoype
Was a dear friend and lover of the pipe.
He used to say one pipe of Wishart's best
Gave life a zest.
To him 'twas meat and drink and physic,
To see the friendly vapor
Curl round his midnight taper,
And the black fume
Clothe all the room,
In clouds as dark as sciences metaphysic.